The Question

He is tired now. He will never admit it, of course, but the watery gray of his eyes betrays him. Still, I feel the urgency to press on. One more question.

“How did you meet her?” I ask. Tentative, delicate. I see the recollection flit across his face.

A deep breath. Twitching hands. The flash in his eyes.

“Boy, she was something.” I nod, as though my own eyes see the shadows that dance across his memory. “I had just come back, you know. And everything had changed.”

He takes his time, savoring his journey through the years. Images buried by the decades. They wash over him, refreshing some deep, hidden part of his soul. The faces that fill his thoughts are all ghosts now.

“I used to wake up screaming—have I ever told you that? It was like I was trapped back there, in some hellish other-worldly prison. Each night fighting for my life. I thought I’d never make it.”

I reach out and hold the shaky, weathered hand. The hand of a soldier, once strong.

“And then there she was.” The lines soften. The corners of the dry lips dance. “She saved me.”

“Where did you first see her?” I know the story, but still I ask. I want him to relive it, just for a moment.

“It was at a dance. We all danced back then. I didn’t want to go, of course.”

I nod as he stands on the shore of the memories, hesitating just a moment. The water laps his feet. He presses on, a little deeper.

“I swear she was the only woman there. Brown curls bobbing as she danced with her friends. And that smile—well, when she turned it on me, I was hooked.”

I grin, imagining the youthful face in the glowing light of the dance hall, the smile I knew only by its wrinkled outlines.

“We didn’t wait long—to marry, I mean. I guess I was afraid she would think twice. Two months later I made her my bride, and that’s what she was for sixty-seven years.”

He is seeing her sun-drenched skin, soft and smooth. Kissing her neck, pulling her close. Remembering things only he knows now.

I look away, an intruder on their mingled memory. The intimacy of the years held in his breath, his private smile. This moment is theirs.

His voice comes to me as though drifting across distant waters, quiet, dream-like.

“She gave me three girls. Beautiful girls, just like her.”

His eyes dance.

“Three girls, and one bathroom,” he chuckles to himself, “Boy, the ruckus they raised! She took it in stride. She always took things in stride.”

He laughs quietly.

“We did everything together. Everything we could. I only left her to go to work, and then, why, I swear I was counting the hours until I could get back to her again.”

Another pause. He rocks quietly in his chair, as though by rocking he might stir her presence.

“She could always make me laugh,” he goes on. “About anything, really. Once, toward the end, she had me laughing so hard I nearly lost my teeth. Had to hold them to keep them from falling out. And still she went on, one funny line after another. I thought I might die from laughing.”

I let him linger there, for a moment, the joy still dancing in his watery eyes.

I suck in my breath. One more. The one I have wanted most to ask. My whole world hangs on this question.

“How did you do it? How did you let her go?” I exhale the courage with my breath.  

There is a long pause then. We sit in our respective pain, working the muscles of our jaws and blinking back the heartache.

“It wasn’t about losing her.” He looks at me then, seeing me, perhaps, for the first time. A gentle look, but still distant. As though the space between us is marked out by far more than years, defined by the inexperience of my youth. He must think I cannot understand.

“It wasn’t about losing her,” he repeats, slowly. “It was about having had her. About all the years I got to hold her. She was mine. I didn’t lose that.”

His eyes grow heavy then. His breath deepens. I squeeze the hand she held. Bend to kiss the papery forehead, patting his bony shoulder. He is with her; I can tell by the smile. The nightmarish dreams banished forever by the memory of her.

The drive is silent, my own mind miles away. I arrive at the brick building, imposing and sterile. The clamor of life-saving noise is left in the bustling hallway as I close the door softly behind me and enter the silent room. I pick up his hand, kiss the ring I placed there. My eyes pause on his body, broken beneath the blankets. No intervention or procedure could hold back the inevitable.

He lies still, enshrined in the hospital bed surrounded by picture frames. Each one is a window to our lives. The moments we have loved most: the vacation to Athens, hiking the woods, smiling with our own beautiful girls. The boating trip when I caught the biggest fish. Our anniversary dinner.

These are the moments I will keep alive. The places to which the waves will carry me, inviting me to linger.

Someday, the sea of relentless time having separated me from this place, someone will ask, “How did you do it? How did you let him go?”

I will come back here, to this place with its moments and memories.

“It was never about losing;” I whisper to myself, “it was about having.”

This story was a semi-finalist in the North Carolina Writer’s Network Thomas Wolfe Fiction Contest 2021.